MICHAEL CARRICK accepts he will be unable to keep the current Middlesbrough squad together this summer, and has praised the club’s loanees for their impact over the course of the season.

Wednesday’s play-off semi-final defeat to Coventry City did not just mark the end of Boro’s campaign, the game at the Riverside will also prove to have been the final match played for the club by a number of the home side’s players.

Goalkeeper Zack Steffen will return to Manchester City at the end of his loan spell, and while there is a good chance the 28-year-old could be sold this summer given it is hard to envisage him breaking into Pep Guardiola’s side, it is also hard to see how Boro could afford either his wages or the fee that his current employers will demand for his services.

A couple of months ago, it looked as though the Teessiders would have a good chance of securing a permanent deal for Ryan Giles, but the mood music at Molineux has changed markedly in the last month or so and it now appears as though Wolves boss Julen Lopetegui wants to give the full-back a chance to stake a claim for a first-team spot in pre-season.

The same is likely to be true of both Cameron Archer and Aaron Ramsey at Aston Villa, with the pair having impressed during their time on Teesside in the second half of the season. Archer looks like being part of Unai Emery’s plans for next term, and while Ramsey could potentially head out on another loan move, that decision is unlikely to be made until August and the final few weeks of the transfer window.

Alex Mowatt is another player whose future looks like being away from Teesside, with his permanent employers, West Brom, seemingly looking forward to having him back in the fold in the summer, and Boro will obviously not be looking to negotiate a new deal for Rodrigo Muniz, whose loan move from Fulham turned out to be a major disappointment.

The departure of six senior players will leave a series of gaps in the squad, which Carrick accepts will have to be filled this summer.

“Every one of them, I don’t think I could single any of them out, they’ve all played their part,” said the Boro boss. “Unfortunately, such is football, when you bring a group together like this with some players who are your own and some who are not, as a group you come to an end of the road.

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“That’s true of this particular group because of the ones that might have to leave us. They’ve been fantastic though, and you would never think that they’re loan players. They’ve been all in, part of the group and fitted in straight away.”

Carrick will welcome a couple of Boro’s own loan players back into the fold at the start of pre-season training, with Josh Coburn having had a successful year with Bristol Rovers and Hayden Coulson having spent the season in Scotland with Aberdeen.

He is hoping both players will have benefited from their time away from Teesside, just as he hopes Boro’s returning loanees will be better players thanks to their experiences as part of his squad.

“Hopefully, they’ve benefited from the experience because, especially the younger ones, that was the idea of coming here,” he said. “It’s about learning, developing and producing something.

“We got close (to winning promotion), and hopefully they will be better for it. Who knows what happens in the next few weeks and months in terms of who stays and who goes. We’ll have to wait and see.”